Enterprises commonly maintain multiple copies of important data and expend large amounts of time and money to protect this data against losses due to disasters or catastrophes. In some storage systems, data is stored across numerous disks that are grouped together. These groups can be linked with arrays to form clusters having a large number of individual disks.
In cluster storage systems, numerous controllers exist on the network. Problems can occur when controllers have visibility to resources, such as array definition metadata, that do not belong to the array to which the controller is a member. If the controllers are not properly managed, then algorithms in their internal firmware can cause inconsistencies, confusion, and data loss.
Regardless of the backup or data transfer techniques being used, enterprises can lose valuable time and money when storage arrays are taken offline or shutdown. In these situations, applications are shutdown, storage devices are disconnected and reconnected, LUNs (logical unit numbers) are re-mapped, etc. While the storage arrays are offline, operation of the enterprise is disrupted and jeopardized.